Identitatem Sui Perdita
by Askari Knight
Summary: GURPS4E. How much of a man depends on his memory? He knows he is not who he thinks he is. She did too good a job, invested too much power. She is both powerless and unwillingness to unlock his memories, and the Art to do so is forbidden magic. He must find someone who can break the spell before he drowns in his nightmares.


_Prelude_

Ruby lightning shattered the otherwise peaceful spring morning, startling birds for miles around into silence at the unexpected crack of thunder.

The bolt lanced down into a clearing, where the village healer had been kneeling to gather herbs. Her vision swallowed by false-motes from the incandescent flash and hearing all but gone in the first crack, she could do little else but flinch back and pray for survival.

So blinded, she was unable to see as the strangely heatless lightning crawled over a still body. Sparks danced and bled away into nothing as the old woman struggled to see all the power her hidden sense told her had so suddenly flooded the grove.

Pulling her shawl closer about her, she whispered the first few words to a Working of Power. The rest of the tongue-punishing syllables followed within her mind, golden swirls and angles birthing direction for the Power to work her will upon the world. A touch to her closed eyelids chased the false-motes and allowed her to see the strange sight before her.

All the small plants of the clearing lay nearly flat, as though a great, oblong gust of wind had come from the heavens and bent them back away from its strike. At the center of the circle – facedown and unconscious – was an unusually attired young man: blue pants with white specks and a faded black shirt. He had no shoes, and the soles of his feet were only a little dirty.

The old woman had never seen such material as his clothing in all her life, and with slowly gathering courage she reached out to test the feel of the fabric, uncertain that he was real.

As though her touch had activated some hidden mechanism the young man began to stir.

With an undignified squeak she fell back and stared as he began to lever himself up. He touched the side of his head as though to look for blood or in pain, then began to peer at his surroundings. The old woman didn't let him see much, speaking an old word accompanied by a complicated gesture.

The young man froze at her voice, then dropped limply into his previous position. He began to snore softly as the Working overcame him and the old woman panted in exhaustion, sitting on the ground to rest. It had been many years since there had been need to call upon the Power in such rapid succession, and her body could no longer handle the strain.

It was some time before she felt strong enough to attempt another Working, but the effect she had wrought was designed to cause a night's slumber if uninterrupted. Once rested she intended to replace the Work with another of like effect, but one that would allow him to wake only at her command…or by injury.

She took care not to touch him as she carefully picked up her upended woven basket and collected the herbs she'd picked earlier. Upon checking to make sure they were all accounted for she clucked her tongue in irritation, glancing at her guest. Wintermane was a particularly difficult plant to find and harvest, not just for its rarity but for its fragility. When picked the plant quickly becomes stiff and brittle, and the shockwave from the young man's sudden arrival had shattered the plant – of use only when whole – into several useless pieces.

The old woman released her white-knuckled grip on the basket's handle and forced herself to calm down. Just because this man was here now did not mean that he was at fault for destroying so precious an herb.

As her nerves settled she began to think about his arrival. Clearly some accident of the Power had sent him here. Had he been fooling around with the forbidden Portals?

She looked about and licked her lips nervously. What she was about to do would earn her death on swift wings should the Imperium ever hear of it. Fortunately, in this backwater land they were unlikely to be lurking beneath a tree. But if this one might know the forbidden lore, perhaps she could use it to finally escape.

But first she would have to ensure he wouldn't wake during her search.

Calmer now, she prepared herself for the series of Works to follow, and thus prepared she would draw upon her physical strength no longer but instead purely from her ring, a vast reservoir of the Power's essence she had spent centuries enchanting.

The first Work pushed him into a more secure slumber, and the second created a barrier against Far-Knowings. The third delved deep into his mind, where she encountered thoughts in an unknown language and images of a city built from metal and glass. Beyond that, with the sense of the city shrinking to an infinitesimal size came the image of a green and blue ball, spinning with drifts of white vapor about it. She realized with a shock that it was his world, and almost inadvertently delved deeper into that, to the concept of the size of their sun and all its worlds orbiting around it, rather than the sun around the world as was reality.

The old woman had no idea where he got such foolish ideas, but as she looked further she found man-shaped beasts with a single golden eye in place of a head, which blinked to reveal the face of a man. An image of a white bird attached to a red tube frightened her when she saw the destruction unleashed beneath it as it took skyward flight, and she began to realize that perhaps the man's belief of the world as a single ball spinning around the sun might have some credence.

What a strange land he came from: metal creatures that people crawled into, which moved on wheels instead of legs, which traveled far faster than even the swiftest horse…perhaps even as fast as the dragons of history. Steel birds which carried hundreds of people across vast oceans, and the people themselves! Such diversity! This man was a proper pale color, but in his mind she saw people with olive skin and brown and even black.

She pulled herself out of the trance before the images could swallow her, and the man groaned in reaction. Such a withdrawal was an unpleasant experience, but her spell of sleep held, and he returned to his dreams.

As the old woman sat back on her heels and regarded the stranger, an odd sensation teased the periphery of her mystical senses. She frowned, thinking on what she'd seen. In all those images there hadn't been a single instance recognizable as magic. It would take an immense number of mages to animate that many of those metal constructs, though. Perhaps in his world there was a plethora of magical talent, but twisted to the animation of objects.

A smile creased her worn face as she considered the possibilities. If this man knew how to traverse worlds, she could escape this wretched land.

Of course, that depended on if he actually was a mage, or if her body's advanced age was playing merry havoc with her senses. She licked her lips nervously as she rubbed her hands together, trying to ward off the grave's chill from her withering body.

Once more she drew on the power within her ring, once more she opened her senses. Now she could see clearly the core of magic within this man, and what she found astonished her. From his memories she knew him to be in his early twenties, but the seething mass of arcane potential was absolutely raw…if unusually stable. Any child would have had recognized their talent by the age of five, or at the latest by ten. But this… She shook her head. This was unheard of!

"What manner of world are you from?" She asked, shaking her head. "No matter. The gods have granted me a gift, and I shall accept." Her brows drew down in a frown as she thought. She would not be able to take him without raising undue concerns. Therefore… "A pity you have those memories," she chuckled. "But not for long. Let us bind them, young man. Let us help you to start anew." She raised her hands and began to sing. Hope lent strength to her tired limbs.

Her future was within reach.


End file.
